10.03: Soccer Kit Searchers

"If you haven't got plans I was hoping you’d come down to the briefing room on Level Three," said Emma. "I need someone with half a brain to bounce ideas off."
Jamie reached over his shoulder and thumped on his book-laden pack. "I've got lessons Em," Jamie said into his phone.
Emma smiled. "It's funny how you forget stuff. I used to loathe Saturday morning lessons when I was at school, but I haven't even thought about them in years."
"When you get as old as you are, it's only natural for the mind to start going."
"Watch it, cheeky.”
“I'm happy to help," Jamie said. "But I'll have to clear skipping lessons with my mentor. Oh wait. That’s you."
“Let me think about it. Okay just this once.”
The rain started blasting in marble-sized balls as Jamie exited the main education block. The entrances to the basement complex were in the mansion and that meant a swift run across the grounds. Of course there were no umbrellas in the holder by the doors. There never were.
"What are we brainstorming?" he asked as he ran for the Greenhouse, this was a huge structure where a lot of lessons happened. You could get most of the way to the main house through here.
"Football kits," Emma said cryptically.
Jamie stood inside the main even though he had taken the more sensible route he was still soaked. He stood in the rear entrance unlacing his sodden trainers as Sophie Mantega came in, she was dressed for the weather.
She adopted a sarcastic tone. "Ooh, is it raining out?"
"You've noticed," Jamie said. "Anything exciting happening?"
Sophie shook her head. “Nice and dull, which is good because I'm trying to revise physics. But Frost asked me to come and help her out downstairs.”
“Yeah me too. Hey there aren’t any towels around are there?”
Sophie pointed over to their right. “Laundry room is there, you could try it.”
“Thanks Soph. See you down there.”
In the laundry room Jamie peeled off his wet socks, dropped them on a pile of waiting washing and grabbed a clean towel. Once he had done the best he could drying off, Jamie headed for the elevator and touched his pass card to the sensor.
“Jamie Braddock. Sub Level Three.”
There was a faint hum as he was scanned and confirmed as the card holder. Exiting Jamie walked to the main briefing room, he saw a couple of people working in the communications suite, maybe there was someone out in the field right now.
Because it was always in use, the briefing room never got tidied properly, whilst cleaning duties were handed out as penalties hardly anyone got assigned to the basement as they would need to be accompanied as they didn’t have clearance. There were mounds of paperwork, coffee cups, broken computer components and Post-its spread over the workstations arranged in a
semicircle under a double-height ceiling.
"OK," Emma said, as she stood by a white marker board mounted on a side wall. "Last night you used your psi ability on Hisako to help her remember details she couldn’t quite get. She mentioned seeing a photograph on the wall in an office. Two muddy boys, aged between ten and twelve. They were wearing soccer kits: maroon and orange hooped socks, maroon shorts and orange shirts. The shirts also had a logo, which Hisako described as a square smiling cartoon."
Jamie sat in one of the office chairs, rocking it from side to side as he faced Emma. Sophie was further away with a physics textbook in her lap, but listening to what Emma had said.
“Why is the kit so important?" Jamie asked.
"Because if we can identify the team that these boys play for, we can get their names. Once we have their names we can find out where they live and who their parents are. Once we know that we can find out who Daddy is and where Daddy works."
Emma smiled at Sophie. “Precisely.”
"At least maroon and orange is unusual," Jamie said. “Millions of football teams must wear red and black, or blue and white, but who plays in maroon and orange?"
Emma nodded and wrote maroon and orange on the whiteboard.
"How do we know it's football?" Sophie asked. "I mean. What if it's rugby, or hockey?"
"Fair point," Emma said, as she added Rugby? and Hockey? to the board. “Although it makes our task harder, not easier."
Sophie laughed. "Sometimes the truth hurts."
"You said the boys were muddy," Jamie said. "Which makes rugby more likely. And hooped socks are quite common for rugby teams."
“They are?” Sophie asked.
"What happens when you Google football teams?" Sophie asked.
"I had a quick mess with the web," Emma said. "You get thousands of random teams. I tried searching for orange and maroon kit too and all I got was a Sydney rugby union side."
“There’s two kinds of rugby, league and union. I am not sure what version they play over here. And the Internet's not geographical," Jamie said.
"You can't narrow your search down to teams in specific areas, unless you know an exact place name. But what about local newspapers? You know, they always report kids’ football matches and have team photos and stuff. We know the approximate area where Hisako was. We could get copies of local newspapers from all around. There might be a hundred or so and you’d have to go through lots of back issues. It would take a while, but it's far from impossible."
"Worth thinking about," Emma agreed, as she wrote local newspaper archives on the whiteboard. “I suppose you could even try calling the newspapers up, because a local sports correspondent might know which teams play in which colours."
"But you"d tip people off that we’re looking," Sophie said.
"I don't think that's critical," Emma said. "We can easily find an excuse. Say we’re police looking for a young burglar or mugger seen wearing those colours, something like that."
"What about the sponsor’s logo?" Jamie asked. "Like, I know you can't type square cartoon man into Google, but there must be a place where trademarks are kept. And they must be indexed somehow."
"Long shot," Emma said. *But that's what brainstorming’s all about."
As Emma wrote trademark registry? on the whiteboard,
Sophie shot out of her seat. "I played football before I joined Xaviers," she said excitedly. "My mum ordered a kit and got this local shop to sponsor us."
"So what are you getting all excited about?" Emma asked.
"Kit suppliers," Sophie said, as she typed football kit suppliers into the computer in front of her.
“I get it, Sophie," Jamie said. "There are tens of thousands of kids’ football teams in the country. Hundreds of leagues, hundreds of local newspapers, hundreds of schools, youth clubs and churches that run them, but there are probably only a few companies that supply printed football kits. And most of them would have records of who they've sold kits to and what colours they were."
Emma broke into a smile. "Nice one, Sophie," she said, as she wrote KIT SUPPLIERS!!! up on the board.
"And if it's like most businesses, the market for kits is dominated by a few big companies. If we can identify the biggest kit suppliers, then get them to send us a list of everyone who’s ordered an orange and maroon kit in the past five years, there's a decent chance we'll locate the team we're looking for."
"We'll get a list of kit suppliers off Google," Emma said. "Then we'll cross check company names against State Department of Corporations and IRS records, so that we can pick out the ones with the biggest financial turnover. Then we'll start making phone calls, starting with the
biggest and working our way down."
"A lot might be closed on a Saturday," Jamie said.
Emma nodded. "But I'd still like to get on with this. We'll get the company directors’ names and crosscheck against bank databases to get home addresses and contact details. I don't care if they're golfing, sailing their boat or visiting Granny. We'll find out who sells orange and maroon football kits, then who’s been ordering them and where they play."
"Might take a while tracking all these people down," Jamie said.
Emma nodded in agreement. "You got any mates who wouldn't mind getting out of Saturday morning lessons too?"